Unearthed, p.7
Unearthed, page 7
part #4 of Southern Watch Series
Wary, but not jaded enough not to jump all over it. “We need more money,” Reeve said, shaking his head. “I’m trying to cover the county, but our incidents have—I mean, spiked ain’t even the right word for it. Our 911 call volume for major incidents is up 1,000%—no bullshit. I gotta send deputies out to investigate every single one of them, and we just don’t have the manpower.” He checked his watch, an old black digital model that bulged on his wrist. “On an average night six months ago, we’d get one call, and it’d be something minor. Now, on a good night, we get at least twenty calls, and you can flip a coin as to whether there’s a homicide or three in there somewhere.”
“I was looking at the numbers,” Pike said, face inscrutable. “We’re averaging ten murders and/or unexplained disappearances a week right now. What do you attribute that to?”
“Big number incidents,” Reeve said, pulling off his fishing cap and running a hand over his bald head. “That freeway thing pumped it up. The Crosser Street Massacre—”
“Cute name for it,” Pike said.
“Blame the local fish wrapper for that one,” Reeve said. “That was at roughly the same time as the freeway thing. Between the jogging incidents that followed, the disappearances … I mean, it’s a goddamned mess.”
“Hmm,” Pike said. His eyes were piercing, dark. “And that missing deputy you got? Archibald Stan?”
Reeve felt like someone waved a caution flag on that one. “He’s a person of interest in that business at the festival.”
Pike stared at him. “You can’t find him?”
Reeve hesitated then shook his head. “If he’s smart, he’s left town.”
“I see,” Pike said. “So that’s a dead end?”
“I think so,” Reeve admitted, though he felt like he had to drag it out. “I don’t know what he had going on at the Summer Lights, but I find it hard to believe he’s involved in this other … stuff. I mean, he could be, but …” Reeve ran a hand over his head again, feeling his fingers slide over the grease of a day’s sweat on his bald scalp, “… I guess I have a hard time imagining anyone doing what’s been happening here lately.”
“Dangerous people out there,” Pike said, shaking his head. “I’ll tell you what I think’s happening.”
Reeve felt his eyebrow raise involuntarily. “Please do.” … share your ignorant, shit-brick opinion. I could use some fertilizer.
Pike went on without pausing. “Other counties see a rise in their crime rates like this, there’s no doubt what’s going on: meth production out the wazoo. You got drug gangs moving in from somewhere—maybe even international—and they kickstart the shit out of crime. You get gang-related killings, slayings, trying to get people to shut their mouths about what’s going on. Kidnappings, rape, all hell else.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“I’ve talked to the state police about that possibility,” Reeve said, finding he was suddenly hesitant to put the kibosh on the County Administrator’s enthusiastic theory. “Not that there’s an exact profile for when that sort of thing happens, but there’s some commonalities.”
Pike kept his arms folded, but looked like he was bristling slightly. “Such as?”
“Increase in drug arrests, for one,” Reeve said. “State police haven’t caught any more trafficking going on in this area than usual. We haven’t seen a rise in arrests for possession, or caught anyone with anything exotic, either. Mostly pot and crappy meth, oxy, and not in high numbers. We’ve got a few CI’s out there, too, and they ain’t saying nothing about new operations or supply.” He let out a low breath. “Town like this, we know almost everybody, right?”
Pike nodded, eyes to the side like he was in deep contemplation. “Sure.”
“If the victims were into drugs in any way,” Reeve said, “well … hell, most of ’em definitely weren’t. But if there were a few who were, I honestly believe they would have been on the usage side of the quadrant, not the distribution or manufacture.” Reeve sighed and put his hands behind his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything like this before, and if I’m being real frank, I almost feel like no one at the state police has, either.” Not that they’d been of much help. Ever since the freeway pile-up, getting the state police to send him anything other than a standard email or BOLO had been like trying to drag a bull around by its cock: not fruitful and kind of painful.
“Way I see it,” Pike said, “you’re sort of caught between Scylla and Charybdis here.”
Reeve blinked. “Come again?”
Pike smiled. “They were navigational hazards for the ancient Greeks. Myth held Scylla to be a sea monster and Charybdis to be a whirlpool. They were placed,” he leaned forward and put his hands opposite each other on the surface of the desk, “on either side of a strait. You got too far to avoiding one, you hit the other.”
Reeve gave it a moment’s thought. “So it’s kinda like saying, ‘between a rock and a hard place.’”
Pike cracked a grin. “Yeah, sure, if you wanted to say it all pedestrian and clichéd, like everybody else.” He snorted. “My point is, you’re stuck between two bad options here. I’ll get you some money to staff up, but, uh … you got something on here that is clearly beyond your comprehension. Beyond any of ours, I’d say,” he added, though Reeve had already caught the whiff of condescension. “Have you tried talking to the FBI?”
“Doesn’t fall into their jurisdiction until we can prove something interstate is going on,” Reeve said, shaking his head. “But, between you and me, I’ve talked to them and they don’t want to even acknowledge us. State police is in a similar dilemma; no proof of crossing county lines, and they won’t even answer my calls anymore.” He sighed again. “You may think we’re between silly and carry-whatever, but I’m telling you it’s more like we’re the survivors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.”
Pike screwed up his face for a second, then got it. “Sharks everywhere, no help in sight.”
“Got it in one,” Reeve said, feeling a dour look settle over him. He glanced back, out his office window at the vacant lot next door, overgrown with tall grass and weeds. “Every night I go to bed wondering if the morning is gonna come without incident, or if we’re gonna get something that makes everything so much damned worse.”
There was a knock at the door, and Reeve glanced at Pike as he felt his stomach drop. Donna wouldn’t knock right now unless it was important. “Come in,” he said without gulping.
She cracked the door and let it open slowly, and her look told him enough to send his stomach plunging the rest of the way. “We got a call, Nick,” she said. She was the only one who called him that. “Emilio and some of his boys from the orchard were going along County Road 17.” She blinked and a tear ran down her cheek, magnified by her glasses. “Said they saw a sheriff’s car parked out there with the lights on and the door open, so they stopped to see what was going on, thought maybe they could help if there was a chase in the woods.” Her face paled as she spoke, growing whiter and whiter. “They found Reyes laid out on the side of the road.”
“Dear God,” Pike said, barely whispering.
“He was dead, Nick,” Donna said, her face crumpling. “He was dead.”
Her voice got high and then sagged, and Reeve fell back against the back of his chair, the energy leaving his body. Reyes dead—aside from the implications of losing a man who had worked with him for years and years—meant that they were down to three, now.
Nicholas Reeve stared at his wife as she wept openly and kept himself from saying anything stupid in the presence of the County Administrator. Pike got up and comforted Donna with a hug, and Reeve watched her face sink into the man’s suit as he sat there, stunned, just staring at the wood paneling on the far wall as a disturbing little voice whispered in his ear.
Three to go …
*
“Sunset,” Arch said as he stood looking out the kitchen window. He found himself looking forward to the nights lately, especially ones like this, ones where he was like an arrow loosed from the bow. He clenched a hand on the broadsword that leaned in the corner by the back door, let his fingers run over the hilt. He was getting used to carrying a sword, used to the heft and the weight, was practicing with Hendricks on the days when the cowboy wasn’t too sullen to show him a few things. He was getting better, too, which seemed to make the cowboy even more sullen.
“I think dinner’s almost done,” Alison said from her place by the counter, no fan to blow away the light smoke of the stove.
They cooked indoors, against most reason about using a camp stove inside. They tried not to go out of doors too often in the daytime. The neighbors may have been a ways off, but noise carried quite some distance in these woods, and it wouldn’t do to be found out. They had the car covered up with a tarp behind the barn, kept the house looking like a post-apocalyptic reject, and kept out of sight during the days. It was all Arch could think of, but they did what they could. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Arch said.
“I don’t think Hendricks is too pleased with my cooking,” Alison said as she stirred the little pot.
“Then Hendricks can go spit,” Arch said easily, letting the sword rattle against the wall. This one was his, his own, brought to them only a few weeks ago by—there was the sound of a slammed door in the driveway and Arch moved the thin curtain aside from the kitchen door’s window—Bill.
His father-in-law made the trip out almost every day, Arch reflected. He’d run down to Cleveland or Chattanooga and pick up supplies, paying out of his own pocket to feed them, and then he’d go out with them at night, cover ’em from the woods with his rifle, just like his daughter. Bill looked thinner lately, probably from all the exercise this required. The lack of sleep, too, maybe. The man had to keep his secret after all, so he couldn’t sleep all day like Arch and the others did.
Arch opened the door to greet him, and Bill already had a meaty fist extended to knock. “Hello, Arch,” he said, pleasantly. Bill Longholt was a true gentleman and always on an even keel, it seemed. “Ali,” he said to his daughter, who didn’t look up from the camp stove. It was Bill’s stove, actually.
“Well, well, well,” Hendricks said as he thumped down the stairs. He’d probably heard the door and the greetings from all the way up there. Sounded like Duncan was a step behind. The cowboy and the OOC—Arch still couldn’t remember what that stood for at least half the time—came into the kitchen.
The demon took a seat at the folding table in the middle of the room, resting his hands on the checkered white and red tablecloth. He was wearing a suit, as usual, black and white with some grey thrown in for bland measure. Duncan wore those kind of things all the time. It hadn’t always been so, but for the last six weeks, it seemed like he wanted to be as grey as possible, no color. Arch wondered if there was something to that, but he didn’t know the demon well enough to ask.
“Gentlemen,” Hendricks said, a little wearily, to Arch and Bill then nodded to Alison’s back. “Lady.”
“Oh, yeah, just ignore me,” Duncan said.
“Your lips are still moving,” Hendricks said, prompting the demon to make an amused noise that sounded like a guffaw. “It’s probably best for both of us that I do ignore you.”
“Hendricks,” Bill said, nodding to the cowboy. “You ready for some action, Marine?”
“Unlike the Army,” Hendricks said with a drawl, “I can find action anywhere I go.”
“That may be true,” Bill said, a little wry, “in prison, anyway. Personally, I’m looking for a different sort of action.”
“Oh, yeah,” Duncan said with what Arch recognized as weary, feigned enthusiasm, “let’s go massacre some demons. Whoo. Hoo. Yay.” The demon didn’t talk much, but every once in a while he let off one of these little cutters. His disposition was changing.
“Got a tip on a good one,” Bill said, folding his arms across his massive chest. “House party tonight just outside Midian. Not of a conventional sort. Had someone say they saw a couple trucks coming from out near your friend Spellman’s place,” Bill nodded to Hendricks. “Looked loaded with … something. Tarps covering over the cargo.”
“Edibles, maybe,” Hendricks said. “Of the human variety.”
That turned Arch’s stomach. “Well, if that’s the case, I suppose the Office of—” he glanced at Duncan, “uh, your office won’t mind if we shut that down.”
“Those sort of dealings are frowned on, yes,” Duncan said, running fingers over the straight lines of the tablecloth’s pattern.
“Why don’t we go straight to the source and wreck this Spellman?” Arch asked. He felt an itch of impatience.
“I’d love to,” Duncan said, and there was a flash of anger that twisted his lips and was gone in a hot instant. “Problem was, last time I went out there to do so, I walked through the door and found an abandoned farmhouse.”
Arch felt his jaw tense. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Nothing to mention,” Duncan said. “He’s not local, he’s just got a local entrance. But he’s watching it, and if he sees me coming, he’ll roll up the tent and move, then reopen later.” He shot a look at Hendricks. “If only I knew someone who could go inside and kill him.”
Hendricks looked highly uncomfortable at that. “I would, but—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Duncan said, looking back down at the table. “You’d die trying, kid. All of you would. Leave the big bads like Spellman to the pros.”
“But you could kill him?” Arch asked, staring down at the demon. “If you met him face to face?”
Duncan looked up at him, and there was a flash of unidentifiable color in his eyes. “I’d probably die trying too.” He knocked his knuckles against the table in a sharp knock. “But I’d have fun doing it, and Spellman would know for a fact that he’d had someone crawl up his ass and start tearing chunks out.”
“Why is it always the ass with you people?” Bill asked. “You a Marine, too?”
“Oooh,” Hendricks said with an appreciative nod. “Burn.”
“Beans are ready,” Alison said, lifting the pot off the camp stove and stepping over to the table with it, delivering it right to the thick pad in the middle.
“Speaking of ass,” Hendricks said under his breath.
Arch gave him a half-hearted glare. Alison was trying. She did a fair sight better than Arch or Hendricks, and they’d both given it a try. Duncan had volunteered, but he didn’t even eat most of the time.
In any case, it wasn’t a particularly big pot, but it was enough beans to feed the three of them. Arch glanced at Bill; he’d already eaten, for certain. He always did, like he could sense what his daughter was up to in advance. He took his seat at the table nonetheless, though, like he did every night, and they all sat there, eating the cold beans in silence, readying for another evening fighting against the darkness.
*
“So, what is there to do in this town?” Kitty let her voice crack, all command, like she was ready to deal a lashing to the recipient. She’d lashed him before, tied him down, whipped him relentlessly for countless failures. She could do that; it was in their standard contract. He didn’t love it, but he accepted it.
They were standing in the middle of a grand old manor that had seen some better days and also some worse ones. The signs of renovation were there, that the place had undergone an overhaul. Beautiful granite floors stretched from the entry they stood in, and a grand white staircase split just in front of her and curved its way up to meet at a landing before splitting off to either side of a balcony.
Rousseau wasn’t the typical butler and he didn’t dress like one. He was middle height, wore slacks and a buttoned shirt without a tie or jacket. He was slightly round and spoke in a low, Chicago accent. “Madam,” he said, sounding a little like a ratty gangster as he spoke, “I’ve been here for a few weeks, made some connections with the locals, and I can say with a great deal of confidence that it is not your sort of place.”
She laughed. “Fuck, Rousseau, you little cocksnort, I know that.” Like it wasn’t obvious. “But what is there to do? Who’s who around here? Who can I have a conversation with around here? Are there any restaurants where I’d have to call ahead to get a table?”
“No on the last,” Rousseau said. “There are some locals, some, uhm, higher ups. Titled nobility and whatnot. You could throw a party; they wouldn’t dare turn down an invite from you. Probably make not just their day, but their whole lives. One of the local imports—guy just got here from New Jersey, where he was supposedly a low-level baron of unreported type—is throwing a soirée to which I was able to procure an invitation.”
“Good, good,” Kitty said, already on to the next thing. She ran a hand up the left-side stairwell as she ascended. The walls were a classic blue fleur-de-lis wallpaper that looked like it had been picked out to match the tone of the manor house. Rousseau had spent a decent amount of money to rent this place, and so far, Kitty wasn’t convinced it was worth it. But then, she wasn’t going to be here for terribly long, hopefully. “How’s the other thing going?”
Rousseau followed her up, on the opposite staircase, like he could sense that she didn’t want him treading near her. Good man. Good dog, more like. “I’ve hired a small team to work on it, and they’ve narrowed things down. They’ve got about eight sites to search, and they’ll be starting tomorrow.”
“Cool, cool,” Kitty said, hand running along the bannister. “I want to be there.” It was dust-free. Rousseau had been a busy boy. “I killed one of the local cops on my way in tonight,” she looked over at Rousseau and saw him raise an eyebrow at this admission, “so that ought to lower our chances of having someone respond to whatever digging we’re doing. Why waste time on us when they’ve got real problems?” She felt a toothy smile break across her face, full and genuine. She did enjoy a good spot of chaos. Maybe a little more than a spot. Maybe a lot more than a spot. Why hadn’t she gone to a hotspot in a while?
